Rien wonders if a sudden increase in security at his news organization means an attack on Afghanistan tonight. They say an attack will most likely result in another "event" here in the states. I have no idea what that might mean, what the world might look like after another "event". More excitement, no doubt, and the center may begin to tear. I'm not sure what that means - the phrase "loosing the dogs of war" occurs - and I doubt that's good.

The phrase always made me think of soldiers and guns on the ground, but I realize it also means the people back home behind them, perhaps even more dangerous in their passion. An overstatement, I hope. The attack will come, and one day, I suppose, is as good as another. If the end of the world comes with it and takes more than a few hours to grind us all down, maybe I'll have an opportunity to shoot pictures. Oakland in the fall. Too bad there won't be any opportunities for publication, what with the death of the web and everything.

I don't know if the moving is driving my attitude or a mix of the move and everything else. I've had fantasies of buying that Jeep again and putting together a set of bags with clothes, cameras, film, a couple of cans of Tuna, some extra gas and a road map to everywhere. My guess is we all keep a fantasy we can pull out of out pocket from time to time and think about at our leisure, but this is the first one of mine that's involved a getaway Jeep and a wireless modem. I usually think about something larger, with a small kitchen and a table and a bed made up over the truck cab, space to take a leak and develop film if I haven't gone digital. Oh yeah, and a cat carry on. And cat food and kitty litter. (Jesus, kitty litter? In a getaway car at the end of the world? You still running on all eight cylinders?)

OK. It's Saturday morning now, just back from breakfast at the cafe down by the theater. All that stuff above is a day old. Ancient history. The hormones are beating a different tune. I have an 11:00 appointment to get inside my storage container (You call them, they put it out on a loading dock so you can look inside and move things in, out and around.) I'm feeling an interest in the stuff around me. Move the kitchen today, the bathroom maybe, the stuff out on the balcony and pack up the really delicate stuff. I'm OK with this.

The cafe where I have breakfast on the weekends displays the work of local artists on their walls. There are one or two of these "locals" whom you can find from time to time sitting in the back holding court. I avoid them like the plague, of course. Today there were a couple of guys, more my age than not, one of them talking to the other about an Ansel Adams - Edward Weston show in San Francisco. I was sitting with my back to them a few tables down, the Nikon on the table beside me, as always. The guy with the shooting jacket and the expensive camera. They were talking loud enough for the whole room to hear.

There are framed photographs up on the walls. Usually, it's paintings, but this last month, photographs. Most are in color, some of street people taken, probably, in Asia, although they could have been taken in Chinatown, some of them reasonably good. (Hard, in my opinion, to take good street photography of people in color unless the color adds a specific element to the picture, but that's just me. Most of my color is terrible.) One or two interesting treatments up on the walls where the photographer has taken an image and broken it into framed pieces. A photograph of a dog that works well. Another multi part photograph of a woman that works less well. I wonder if one of these guys behind me is the photographer?

There was a guy sitting across the isle at another table reading the paper. Interesting composition. I picked up the camera and shot a picture as he sat there reading, unaware. My only thought, as I stood, paying the bill, not a glance back to see what these two looked like, was about negatives. One had been describing two negatives that had been on display at the show, a "before" and "after" shot. I might like to see that. Adams and Weston. Why not?